


Seventeen and Pretty (Until She Wasn't)

by canonjohnlock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Body Horror, Dark Castiel, Dark Dean Winchester, Dark Sam Winchester, Dark Team Free Will, M/M, Torture, dark au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 11:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10684734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canonjohnlock/pseuds/canonjohnlock
Summary: Claire Novak just wants her father back.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neverwherever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverwherever/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Horribly Askew](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10682136) by [neverwherever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverwherever/pseuds/neverwherever). 



> Remix of my friend Julia's fic, Horribly Askew! Y'all should check out her other stuff. She just got an AO3 account. :)

Claire had known going into the fight that her chances of coming out alive were slim to none. Still, she packed a small bag and headed off. 

She had been possessed by Castiel once, when she was twelve. It was a bit like being strapped to the front of a comet hurtling straight for the sun. She knew the angel’s power firsthand, but that didn’t stop her as she got on a bus headed towards Kansas. Being possessed once, even if it was only for a few minutes, left Claire extremely sensitive to the angel radio. She had heard whispers of a bunker in Lebanon where the Winchesters stayed and where the Winchesters were, Castiel was bound to be.

Claire found the bunker by asking around at local bars. She was seventeen and pretty, and the men at the bar were old and rough. She could flutter her eyelashes and bite her lip and get whatever she wanted. She left one man bleeding outside the bar when he tried following her and grabbed her hair. The angel blade she had procured was stained with the man’s blood and her sweaty fingertips. She had never killed a man before him, and leaving him bleeding out in that back alley left a hole in her soul. She wiped the blood off the blade and moved on.

She picked the lock on the door, a skill learned from YouTube and necessity, and waltzed right into the bunker. She had left her bag at a dingy motel she had checked into. It had her fake ID and her real one, her phone, and her mother’s phone number. Her mom would find out soon enough. After all, she had only paid for one night at the desk.  

Sam found her first, creeping past the kitchen with the door slightly ajar. He could smell the fear in her, could almost hear her heart pounding. He grabbed her by her hair, held a knife to her throat and demanded she tell him who she was. “Don’t you know?” she spat, angel blade clattering to the ground by her feet. “You ruined my life.”

“I’ve ruined a lot of lives,” Sam snarled and tied her to chair in the war room. The rope cut into the thin skin around her wrists.

Dean came next, his eyes dark and hungry and a cut on his forearm that looked like it had been reopened multiple times. He took one look at her and grinned lewdly. He didn’t say a word as he pulled an ancient blade from a holster and twirled it between his fingers.

“Where’s Castiel?” Claire asked, eyes flicking between the two of them.

“What do you want with the angel, girl?” Sam said.

“I have unfinished business with him.”

“Get in line, sweetheart,” Dean laughed gruffly.

“Where is he?”

“Claire,” a deep voice said, and she whipped her head around so fast her neck cracked.

Her father, or rather the body of her father, stood near the door she had come through. He looked just the same as he had five years ago. His eyes were still the same blue; he had the same laugh lines and crow’s feet.  But his voice was different. It was Castiel’s voice. Hot tears threatened to spill over onto her cheeks as she pulled at the restraints.

“Wait, your vessel’s kid?” Sam said.

“His name is Jimmy,” Claire snapped. “He’s more than your stupid angel’s vessel.”

“You should know better than to insult an angel,” Dean said.

“He took my dad!”

“Your father said yes, Claire,” Castiel reminded her.

“I didn’t! Mom didn’t! You took him from us!”

“He knew what would happen if he consented.”

“I want my dad back.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Claire,” the angel said, descending the stairs to stand in front of her. “He died years ago.”

“No.”

“There’s only so much a human soul can take, you know. It was only a matter of time.”

“ _ No! _ ” Claire roared, anger boiling over. “No, no, no!”  How could she have not known? Wouldn’t she have felt it? Felt the hole her father would have left behind in the world? He was her dad, after all.

Sam grabbed her jaw, held her still. “Nothing you say can change the fact that your daddy is dead, Claire. He’s gone. Died at the hands of Lucifer, of all things. And honestly, if he knew what would happen when he said yes to Castiel, could he really have loved you all that much?”

“Just because your dad was a fucking deadbeat doesn’t mean mine was,” said Claire. At the Winchesters’ shocked faces, she smirked and continued. “That’s right. I know all about John Winchester. Real father of the year, huh?”

“How can you-”

“Angel radio, dumbass. Vessels are sensitive to it.”

“That’s right,” Castiel said. “Sam, Dean, Claire has my residual grace.”

Dean stood up straighter. “You mean-”

“Yes.”

“What’s going on?” Claire demanded. “What are you talking about?”

“This is gonna hurt, kid,” Dean smiled. “And then we’re gonna kill you.” His eyes flashed black, his grin blood red. Maybe she imagined that last part, but it seemed right, disgusting as it was.

“Dean,” his brother warned.

“Come on, Sammy. Makes my blood stronger,” he said. Sam licked his lips and glanced at Castiel, who nodded.

“What are you talking about?” she said again.

Amelia would find her only daughter in her bed, three days after she called the police to report her missing. She would walk into Claire’s room and find her body there, reeking of blood and urine. She would throw up on the carpet and pass out, and the cops would find her there a few hours later. But that was later, and this was now. 


	2. Chapter 2

They moved her to their dungeon, where Sam and Castiel had scrubbed away the devil’s trap so Dean could come inside. They kept her tied to a chair, the rope burning her chafed skin. She spat at them and called them names and demanded they  _ let her go, damn it. _ They left her in the dark room for a few hours at least, before Castiel came inside. 

He looked weak, to put it simply. There were bags under his eyes and his skin was pale and sweaty. “Angel’s not looking too good,” Claire told him, teeth bared.

Castiel ignored her and instead untied her from the chair.

There was a split second where Castiel yawned, so Claire took it. A cheap shot to the balls made Castiel release her and then a knee to his nose made him fall. She kicked him once, too, right in the ribs, before barreling out of the room. Dean caught her as she streaked through the halls. 

He grabbed her by the wrist and twisted, and Claire heard a sickening snap. She had broken her arm once before, when she was seven. She had been biking with her dad and lost control. Her front tire hit a rock and she went over the handlebars. She landed on her left arm and heard the same crunch. Her cast had been green and her mom had drawn flowers on it.

The pain didn’t register with her until Dean was locking her wrists into the manacles in the dungeon. She cried out as the jagged bones dragged over her nerves and skin. The chains held her up so high she had to stand on her toes to avoid jostling her broken wrist. Castiel didn’t return, leaving her and Dean alone.

“You’re very pretty, you know that?” he told her, walking in a slow circle around her.

“Fuck you,” Claire spat.

“Hmm, maybe,” Dean said, squeezing her broken wrist. She let out a sob, and then bit her lip. Claire was not a virgin, and she knew what sex could get her (information, money, favors, STDs, pregnant). She also knew that sometimes it happened to those who didn’t want it. Dean put one hand around her wrist and the other around her neck. Her feet tangled in the pants around her ankles as she swung from the manacles. Dean’s breath was loud and hot in her ear, his eyes dark, almost black in the low light. Claire would have been okay, mostly. She could have buried the memory and tried to move on, but in the cracks between the bookshelves hiding the dungeon, she saw her father’s blue eyes. Claire saw her father watch and do nothing, and no matter how many times she told herself that Jimmy wasn’t there anymore, it didn’t take any of the pain away.

Dean left her, blue jeans around her ankles and blood trickling down her thighs.

One in five women are raped in their lifetime. Claire was that one of five. If she had lived, she would have discovered a few weeks later that she was pregnant. If she had lived, a monster would have grown inside her. A baby born of rape, a baby born of demon blood. It would have ripped its way through her, torn her up inside and out, and she would have died alone in a back alley in a small town in Idaho. So maybe it’s for the better the Winchesters got to her first, so she wouldn’t have been torn apart by the one thing she thought would love her unconditionally.

(Claire had always wanted kids, had always wanted to be loved and to love in return. She had wanted a lot of things, and maybe she would have gotten them, if her father had never said yes.)

Sam came next, and feeling angry, she kicked and screamed at him. He bashed in her knee caps, shattered her patella, and the force with which she dropped ripped her arms from her sockets and decimated her radius, the only bone holding her wrist together. They left her in a chair after that. It’s not like she could have run anywhere.

There was a dark glint in Sam’s eyes when he came back after breaking her knees. His lips were stained red, his fingernails caked in dry blood. He came wielding a hammer, a knife, and the blade she had dropped.

Phalanges, metacarpals, carpals; they all met his hammer. Radius and ulna did, too, and so did her humerus.  _ Crack _ . Scapula and clavicle. All her ribs, tearing into her heart and lungs, but Castiel came through, the word  _ help _ poised on her tongue. He reached within her, a burning sensation in her very (broken) bones and pulled out his grace. A small part, residual grace, but grace nonetheless. He drank it like he had been stuck in a desert and it was the first water he had come across.

He left after that and Claire never saw him again.

Sam stayed with her, laid her out on the ground, her arms smashed and her spirit crushed. She had heard he was studying law, once. Had even gotten a full ride into Stanford. Would he have locked people like himself up? Would he have gotten when he saw pictures of victims, flayed like she was? Dean watched from the doorway, leaning casually against it as Sam sliced through her.

She thought about her mom as she died, and about her dad. If angels are real, does heaven exist? Would she see her dad, her real dad, again? Dying was the easiest thing she had ever done. All she had to do was let go. It washed over her like cool water, like an old friend. Would her mom see her body?

Claire Novak went to find her dad, and she did in the end. She just had to die first. 


End file.
